Part II Waterway Scaling on Regions
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Part II Waterway Scaling on Regions In this part, it tries to summarize the motivation about how to build the large-scale Grand Canal in a very long history. And then the Grand Canal has two crucial elements, one is the route of waterway that is the linear character to link regions; the other is the region of waterway, they are the articulations to support the long waterway working. Both of them are all show us a dynamical condition under the territorial and urban development. Part II Waterway Scaling on Regions etc. In this process of learning the land and rebuild the natural environment, the route of the Grand Canal had evidently experienced many changes in its scale, Chapter 5 Motivations, the Yellow River form, function and position. The Chapter 5 would analysis the changes of the route under the view of migrants and the capital relocated the cultural landscape, discover the principal motives of the changes, and how people built the large scale artificial river year by year. 5.1 Introduction The river regions are a cultural landscape where people settle down there for developing the city, The route of waterway in the Grand Canal town and village. In the regions of a river, there efficiently links different destinations, normally it were many distinctive forms and structures formed would have more than hundreds kilometres long, but by the water and urban area, their functions could how it could be built as a large project, and then to be irrigation, water transportation, commercial area, -75- change the landscape? There is one evidence is the flood prevention work, etc. The region of canal also rivers migrations and floods in the lower plains, it showed a dynamic land and water using, under a generates building the irrigation works to avoid the multi-layers of functions, the historical heritages, natural rivers disasters, particularly the Yellow river irrigation works, transportation, ecological corridor, frequently have migrated and destroyed large areas they are forming a new identity of Grand Canal in of farmlands and towns. Moreover, the Grand Canal the beginning of 21st century. have to borrow the water from natural rivers when it was used as the water transportation between the The urban blocks of canal in chapter 7, it would capital and southern economic centre. Therefore, emphasize the scale of blocks and its relevance the canal's administrators and canal builders have between urban area and water routes, how about to maintain the water also avoid the flood damaged thematic units in urban scale changing and new life the artificial canal, they should consider about many of modern city. The urban block of canal is a basic conditions in the site which canal passed through, unit in the long Grand Canal, but it also experienced such as the landform, soil and vegetation, hydrology, long time transforming under a violent change of Waterway Scaling Regional Development—— A Cultural Landscape Perspective in China Grand Canal city. China’s Sorrow, the Germany geologist, scientist, Ferdinand von Richthofen48, he wrote this nickname for the Yellow River, because of its tendency of the devastating flood that once occurred regularly in its lower course. In its history, the main course of Yellow River had migrated many times in lower plain in the eastern of China. Actually, the natural river always influenced the forming in artificial river, they not only described the a large scale of the river basin area with many cities and natural landscapes, also record the detail -76- of the water projects to prevent the flooding from the China’s Sorrow, Yellow River. But on the other side, we could observe the water transferred from the big river to Grand Canal for maintaining a Figure 5-1 Courses of the Yellow River. navigable condition in the dry season, that means the The water courses great swing moved in eastern of China in more than two thousand years, it's recorded by river's event chronicles in ancient time. relationship between the Yellow River and Grand Source: Geography, 3822. Colorado University. Canal, or the natural river and artificial river are more http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3822_f09/CourseResources.htm complicated to explain. Due to the flood prevention work was the most important requirement, the Yellow river considered as the one of the most significant motives in forming the large scale Grand Canal. The Yellow river has influenced its down- 48 Ferdinand von Richthofen, he is noted for coining the terms the Silk Road in 1877, is wrote in his book “China; Ergebnisse eigner Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien”. Part II Waterway Scaling on Regions streams, on one side, it provided the water for canal Yellow migrations, how to control it river channel and farmland; the other side, it needed the water and reinforce its embankment. Along with the Yellow channels for control the flood. In this Chapter, we river migrations, the artificial river in the land could see how the Grand Canal formed in fighting gradually linked together with a natural river, to form with the powerful Yellow river migrations, and lastly a Grand Canal all over the country by its functions of became a unique artificial water route from Beijing transporting goods and materials from economic area to Hangzhou. to capital. Yellow river originated from north-west of The cultural landscape theory described how the China, has 5464 kilometres long. Its upstream human work changed the nature and the transforming passes from the north-west dry mountainous regions from natural to cultural landscape under the long- to the eastern flatlands. By the geological and term human intervention. The people who lived geographical situation of the river regions, it has along Yellow did the work to control flooding and two major characters, one is the high silt content49, planned the new water channel, which was used in which caused the river could be choked with silt, flooding prevention, adjusting the water level, save -77- then overflew as flood in the flatland and migrated water resource and remove silt. We could say that the itself route; The other thing is that the Yellow Yellow river migrations and flooding were the crucial river turned into aboveground river after people motive for creating a cultural landscape of Grand built the embankment along the river, because the Canal. sedimentation in the bottom of river would lead to We should realize that the cultural landscape riverbed rising. The embankment would easily be of Grand Canal has formed in a long time process, destroyed when the flood peak coming, then heavily from the first step it was a result to resist the natural damaged the farmland and human settlements, even disaster and threaten. The people could manage the cities and towns in the flatland. In the history, natural environment well, and then provide a good from Sui dynasty, people began to learn from the condition for their survival in the large route of 49 By the statistic, the Yellow River had maximum amount of sediment natural river and canal. load per year which reached three billion and nine hundred million ton,and the maximum sediment concentration had 920 kilogram per cubic meter water. Resource from :Yellow River Conservancy By the records in historical documents of the Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources. Waterway Scaling Regional Development—— A Cultural Landscape Perspective in China Grand Canal empire had to discover water resource for new water channel, at the mean time, it needed to protect the southern agricultural area, then transport goods and 12th Century 15th Century 19th Century 20th century 21th century materials to the new northern capital. Yellow River Third, from 16th to 19th century, Yellow river How the natural and artificial river growing together in history? occupied the course of Huai river, passed the Jiangsu China Grand Canal plain then entered to eastern sea, the route of Grand Canal began to separate from Yellow river to avoid Figure 5-2 How Grand Canal was growing with Yellow River in history? the disaster from flood peak. The Grand Canal has By comparing the timeline of both rivers, this is a measure to analysis how the Yellow River impacts on forming the China Grand Canal. experienced a busy working time, from capital Beijing to south economic centre Hangzhou, even irrigation and flood prevention works, it showed that many cities fast expanded urban area as a port city of Yellow river has migrated many times. My work the inner river, such as Lin Qing, Ji Ning, Xu Zhou, -78- considered that Yellow river migrations were crucial Yangzhou, etc. motive to develop the cultural route of canal, which could be concluded in five steps to generate the Fifth, from 19th to 20th century, the Grand transformation of the route: Canal broke in middle age of 19th, due to Yellow river caused a heavily damaging flooding in 1855, First, the period before 12th century, the Yellow then return to its original route in the north plain river passed through the north plain of China where of China and directly destroyed the waterway of developed many cities and towns in the flooding canal. The other indirect reason was the north to the area, in that time the Sui-Tang empire used the Grand south railway, more convenient and efficient land Canal as an irrigation work and transporting route in transportation replaced the waterway. hundreds of years; Sixth, from 20th to beginning of 21st, Grand Second, from 12th to 15th century, Yellow river Canal would be considered as various new social turned into Jiangsu plain in the east of China, since functions, developed multi-use artificial waterway, lack of water in the northern section of Grand Canal especially after become the World Heritage in 2014.